Flashback Review: Zenon: Girl Of The 21st Century

In the 1990’s, Disney Channel officially began to air their very first originally made for tv films, starting with “Under Wraps.” Over the years, more originally made Disney Channel films aired including Halloweentown (has nothing to do with The Nightmare Before Christmas) starring the late Debbie Reynolds, The Even Stevens Movie with Shia LeBeouf, back when he was working on the Disney Channel show Even Stevens, before he started in Transformers, and perhaps the most overrated in my opinion is High School Musical & its sequels.

I have decided to review a TV Movie to try something completely different besides reviewing films that were released in movie theaters. Like this one called “Zenon: Girl Of The 21st Century.” The film aired in 1999, the year Stanley Kubrick passed away along with his last film Eyes Wide Shut came out four months later.

I was 6 years old when I first watched it, now that I’m older, I don’t remember much of it, just some bits and pieces. I rewatched it, and I’m surprised that this was the first film to take place in the year 2049. The reason why I wanted to review this, is because the upcoming film called Blade Runner 2049, takes place in the exact year.

This Review contains huge SPOILERS, read at your own risk.

Positive: A Catchy Song called Super Nova Girl.

The Film predicted IPad tablets.

Trolling is still a thing in the future when Zenon replaced the disc with her own by fooling the bad guy with a video of her blowing a raspberry.

The Ending was the only good part with the song Super Nova which is actually performed by an *NSYNC type of boy band.

Negative: The Special Effects look incredibly dated such as a terrible blue screen effect with Zenon going into a spacewalk. The Exterior of The Space Station looks cheesy. This makes Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar look more realistic than this. The Effects belong in James “Murr” Murray’s bad movie from Impractical Jokers.

Zenon was very annoying. I understand she’s going though a fish out of water scenario why didn’t the people of The Space Station teach her about Earth’s culture, environment, nature, etc.

In this film, Chelsea Clinton is currently The President Of The United States. I certainly hope this doesn’t happen. It’ll be like Professor Umbridge taking over Hogwarts because she’s also the equivalent of Hillary Clinton because she’s extremely unsympathetic. I guess there’s a reason why a space station was constructed in the first place.

One Major Plot Hole was the security cameras that were never installed on the space station. Zenon would’ve never been sent to Earth if they had some. I thought this was the future. It broke my suspension of disbelief. To quote Dark Helmet from Spaceballs, “Even In The Future Nothing Works!” Is everybody in space a flipping moron?!

The future setting on Earth STINKS like Jabba The Hutt’s armpits! It doesn’t look like an actual future at all! I would’ve envisioned something in a dystopian environment like Akira, Blade Runner, or Ghost In The Shell!

Earth Scenes were incredibly boring. Just nothing interesting but rather plain dull. Society on the planet is normal like the present day.

The 2nd Act is forgettable.

Is it me, or does the big bad’s henchmen’s accent sounded like he’s been watching too many Judy Garland movies?

The Final Verdict: D-

Now that I’ve rewatched this Disney Channel film, I wished I’ve never seen this as a kid, if I had a time machine, I woulda told my younger self not watch anything related to a TV movie on Disney Channel.

If you want to watch a better Sci-Fi film, go watch Blade Runner, Akira, Minority Report, or Ghost In The Shell. (1995 film)

I hope our future doesn’t end being plain dull. I want our future to resemble Futurama and have cool looking spaceships to travel to exotic planets.

Published by nickthemoviecritic

Hi eveyone I'm Nick, and I am a huge movie fan. I thought I would start this blog to give true and accurate reviews of movies. Other sites give great movies bad reviews, but I am an ordinary person who just loves movies and tells it like I see it.
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